Food-truck tribulations

Author: Kelly Eng
Photography: Vanessa Levis

A friend asked if I wanted to help out on his banh mi food
truck. Yes, I did! What a marvellous change of pace from my bland
office job. I'd be leaping tongs-first into the food-culture
zeitgeist and cementing my millennial credentials. Totes
amazeballs, YOLO, #vietsub, #frenchcolonialism and all that.

And I had relevant experience - a decade ago I'd worked in a
fish and chip shop. "Okay, okay!" I'd cried when I had to crumb 30
fillets of fish and serve two people at the same time, but all
great chefs are emotional.

So one morning I set off for my first shift.

It was a giant leap onto the truck. I had to lift my foot up
extremely high to throw myself aboard. I hadn't planned on exposing
myself to my colleagues just yet, but they were oblivious,
biceps-deep in vats of pickled carrot. There was no welcome beyond
three muttered names, no induction, no training. But when you're a
bun-slinger for hire, you don't need any. Anyway, the unavoidable
clashing of backsides in that bijou workspace was an icebreaker of
sorts.

Suddenly a customer came. Then another. They kept coming. Like
insatiable zombies they swarmed around the truck, lured by the
scent of flame-licked lemongrass-marinated pork belly, black,
sweet and gnarly from the grill. Luckily we had a rock-solid
system: I barked out the orders and the guys barked them back. All
that mattered was that you barked.

In times of stress, my ability to perform basic mathematics
disintegrates, so I'd brought my calculator. Sure enough, as the
clamour for pork belly increased, my mathematical abilities
decreased. What was eight plus nine? As I jabbed at the
unresponsive buttons, I noticed that a chilli seed had infiltrated
the motherboard.

We still had the system. I barked the relentless orders to
colleagues whose names now eluded me: "I say, you sir! Two pork no
mayo, chicken no coriander, pork extra chilli, chicken no
butter, pork!"

But the system had a glitch.

"You said 'pork chicken, chcken, pork, chicken!'" the head cook
(who had worked on fancy yachts and in Parisian restaurants)
shouted.

"No!" I asserted, "I said 'pork chicken, chicken, pork
chicken!'"

And so it went.

An hour in, I was tasked with informing the customers that we
had run out of chicken. And pork belly. Buns, too. But, boy, were
we good for coriander. When I dropped that bun-shell, 40 pairs of
eyeballs rolled upwards before burning holes in my special
sauce-smeared apron. I plunged my hands into a bucket of pork
marinade and howled.

Five hours later, we'd managed to shoo the customers away with
banh mis of varying consistency.

As I exhaled for the first time in 300 minutes, my eyes rested
on a menu. Dear god: the $8 chickenlickin' banh mi was actually
$11. Too traumatised to calculate how much money I'd given away, I
dipped into my handbag and stuffed $90 into the till. Never mind
that it meant I was paying for the privilege of working on the
truck.

Limp with exhaustion, I drove home and fell into bed, murmuring
"pork, chicken, pork chicken…" But the smell I was giving off
prohibited sleep - eau de swine had infiltrated my DNA.

It's said that those who have glimpsed death develop a new
appreciation for everyday things. The same applies to those who
have had a peek at hospitality. As I trotted into the office
on Monday morning, the hum of the photocopier, the glug-glugglug of
the water cooler and Aileen from HR's nasal tones were like
birdsong. Exhuming my ham sandwich from its Tupperware casket, I
nibbled thoughtfully and shuddered.